Shocking?

Apparently there has been a shocking rise in the number of people who are using food banks, though why this is shocking I don't quite know.
BBC.

A food bank charity says it has handed out 913,000 food parcels in the last year, up from 347,000 the year before.
The Trussell Trust said a third were given to repeat visitors but that there was a "shocking" 51% rise in clients to established food banks. It said benefit payment delays were the main cause.
In a letter to ministers, more than 500 clergy say the increase is "terrible".
The government said there was no evidence of a link between welfare reforms and the use of food banks.
However, the Trussell Trust, the largest food bank provider in the UK, said benefits payments had been a particular problem since welfare changes were introduced just over a year ago.
Some 83% of food banks reported that benefits sanctions - when payments are temporarily stopped - had resulted in more people being referred for emergency food.
And more than 30% of visits were put down to a delay in welfare payments.
The second biggest reason, given by 20% of food bank users, was low income.

To paraphrase the film 'Field of Dreams' if you offer it, they will come.
I've been on benefits before, I've even had difficulties with the benefits office over missing payments, yet never has my family gone hungry, I've always managed to find a way and never been tempted by charities. Still, if someone were to offer free food then yes I'd take it, but I'd spend the money saved on something else because I'd have some spare cash after doing it, granted it might cover fuel costs to getting to an interview, but there would have been savings.
So when a charity giving away free food tells me that there's been a shocking rise in 'customers' I'm not surprised, people will use it if it's available and people have less pride these days in doing so, owing to benefits dependency lifestyles.
Fact is, these charities don't realise or factor in whose pockets the money to pay benefits comes from, they seem to think its the governments. We who pay taxes fund benefits and the benefits budget is far too high owing to government incompetency and the fact that some people will not work no matter what.
There are an awful lot of things wrong  with the country and benefits lifestyle is one of them and the government is right to tackle it. However offering free food and then bitching about the fact that people take it is not helping, if anything it's prolonging the problem...

Figures

I don't know what it is about western governments and their desire to appear good by spending taxpayers money on what they deem 'worthy' projects abroad. The evidence is out there that the majority of cash given is simply siphoned off into the pockets of kleptocrats and into their pension funds in various tax havens.
Telegraph.

Britain hiked its aid spending by more than any other country in Europe last year, figures show.
Foreign aid soared by 28 per cent last year, meaning the UK hit its target of spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on overseas development.
It left Britain with the second most generous aid budget in the world, outstripped only by the United States, and it came as a series of developed nations cut back on their aid spending.
The figures will reignite concerns among Tory MPs that the aid budget is ill-directed and has ballooned at the expense of other Whitehall departments.
Britain spent £10.6 billion on official development assistance in 2013, up from £8.3 billion in 2012, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – a hike of 27.8 per cent.

You'll note that the MP's appear to be more concerned that spending on their departments is lagging, rather than the taxpayer is being stiffed for the bar bill so to speak. Even if we weren't spending the cash abroad, it would still end up being wasted by the government in other words.
The problem is, the government have no control over what the aid is spent on, oh they can stipulate that it must be used for stuff, but once it's out of their hands, that's it and the begging bowl is back in place with little to see for what it's been used for save a marked increase in banking funds elsewhere.
Politicians and the state are not the best people to decide what money should be spent upon, the only people who are, are ourselves. If we wish to give to charity, we should pick the charity, it really ought to be that simple. I rather suspect the government and politicians would be surprised what we spent it on... or perhaps not which is why they do it their way.
Charity begins at home and we should decide who it goes too.

Wrong sort of charity

Basically I'm against the government giving any of our cash away to charities, mostly because they tend to give it to charities that I simply wouldn't give anything too. However they've sort of made a rod for their own back when other charities who aren't dipping their snouts into the public trough get on their high horse and demand a spot...
Mail.

The man who set up a charity project to help British terrorist victims, after his son was killed in an IRA attack in England, last night attacked David Cameron’s ‘offensive and thoughtless’ refusal to throw it a cash lifeline.
Colin Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim was killed in the IRA bombings in Warrington in 1993, spoke out after the Prime Minister turned down a plea for £150,000 to rescue his Survivors For Peace project.
Mr Parry asked Mr Cameron and Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers for the money weeks before the scheme is due to lose its Lottery funding in April.
But he said he was shocked by a letter from Number 10 advising him to use the internet to find the money.
‘It is offensive for Mr Cameron to suggest that after nearly 20 years of running a charity I don’t know where to get money,’ said Mr Parry.
‘I do know and I have been to them all. His thoughtless response suggests he doesn’t see us as a priority. He expects us to muddle through, but we can’t.
‘Unless we find a wealthy benefactor we will have to make our staff redundant and cut adrift all the people who depend on us for support.’

Unfortunately for Mr Parry (or indeed the Mail) he doesn't realise that Survivors For Peace project is the wrong sort of charity in that it is not in place to tell the government what the government wants to hear unlike Alcohol Awareness and the various anti-smoking charities who are virtually all taxpayer funded to lobby in the government to do what it wants to do anyway. Nor like Oxfam and others does it lobby the government to spend our foreign aid budget where the government intend to bribe aid overseas countries kleptocrats.
And sadly worst of all, Survivors For Peace project doesn't offer a huge salary for its executive directors aka friends of the political classes as easy money for life jobs.
In short Survivors For Peace project is a genuine charity although relying on the National Lottery for funding was probably a mistake. The National Lottery is really only interested in trendy causes that involve minorities not actually helping the heroes of a forgotten war.
So Mr Parry's charity will fold because it's not the right sort of charity and is helping the wrong sort of people. That's a pretty damning indictment of the government and the political classes, I doubt they'll care though, not like there's anything in it for them, which I presume is how they judge a charities worth...

Put your hands in your own pockets first

One of the richest landowners in the UK holding several palaces, shopping centres and other assorted properties in it's portfolio demanded that taxpayers shell out on making sure that people do not go hungry. Yes, the Church of England and its well paid bishops in their palaces are telling those of us who are less well off that we have a duty to make sure that those 'suffering' under benefits cuts do not go hungry.
BBC.

Forty-three Christian leaders, including 27 Anglican bishops, have signed a letter urging David Cameron to ensure people get enough to eat.
They argue that "cutbacks and failures" in the benefits system are forcing thousands of people to use food banks.
The End Hunger Fast campaign called the situation "truly shocking". It wants a national day of fasting on 4 April.
But the government said it wanted to help people "stand on their own two feet" by cutting welfare dependency.
The letter comes after Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, warned last weekend that welfare reform was leaving people in "destitution" and labelled it a "disgrace".

These people are clearly big fans of the magic money tree theory of socialist thinking where they seem to be under the impression that the government can just magic up money and make sure that it gets to their favoured cause. They seem to forget that someone has to pay for this and that person is the taxpayer who are often enough struggling to make ends meet themselves without getting their rent/mortgage paid for by the state as well as health benefits. Perhaps the church ought to take a good look at their founder and copy his words to his disciples and actually get out there and heal the sick and feed the poor rather than sitting on their multi-million pound empire and telling the rest of us we have to pay for someone else's food?
Perhaps if they lived their lives in that manner it might actually be worth listening to what they say if they tell us there's a problem?

It's just words

Politicians will say anything if they believe that the public will respond positively too it, though I rather suspect Millipede E wishes he'd kept his trap shut about climate change judging by the amount of criticism he got over it in the comments section of national newspapers.
Still you know a load of guff is being pronounced by a minister when he says the government should stop spending aid money in richer countries no matter the cause, because not spending money and joined up thinking are not something that politicians are renowned for.
Telegraph.

Ministers have been ordered to stop squandering British aid on wasteful projects, including climate change schemes in wealthy countries, the Telegraph has learnt.
Justine Greening, the development secretary, fears Whitehall departments, in particular the Department for Energy and Climate Change, could undermine public support for overseas aid by funding poorly-run projects in middle-income countries that do not need help from British taxpayers.
In a letter seen by the Telegraph, Mrs Greening warns ministers they risk breaching international protocols and face investigation by Britain's aid watchdog if they spend continue to spend money on anything other than relieving extreme poverty in the world’s poorest regions.
Mrs Greening fully supports the Government’s target of spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid. But the warning that some departments are may be misusing aid will bolster Conservative MPs who want David Cameron to divert some of the £8bn a year aid budget on flood relief in Britain.

Thing is I could possibly understand helping those countries in extreme poverty if the aid actually got to where it was supposed to go, but the evidence is quite plainly there that it just goes to line pockets of local warlords and the pre-existing government.
However she doues have a point on some projects such as £15m to cattle ranchers in Colombia, the world’s 30th richest country, to help cut flatulence in cows, giving aid to Belarus a very nasty dictatorship and essentially wasting millions on 'climate change' lunacy which often does more harm than good.
Aid should be by private charity, not government and certainly not government funded fake charities. Who we give aid too should be a personal choice and never never in the hands of politicians and enviro-extremists or as part of someone's pet project.
Granted I know we have legal obligations to pay out so much via the G20, but we could easily just dump the EU aid budget which is politically motivated by their own vicious brand of lunacy.
Charity begins at home, our politicians should remember that.

Charity begins at home

With the Somerset Levels under several feet of water in some places, the Thames bursting its banks upriver of London and even in my neck of the woods the Medway flooding between Yalding and the tidal lock at Allington the pressure is mounting from some to grab from the foreign aid budget and spend it on the people in this country who have been betrayed by the EU and enviroloon led Environment Agency.
South China Morning Post.

The leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, urged the government yesterday to redirect part of its foreign aid budget to flood victims at home.
On a visit to the flood-hit county of Somerset, Farage complained that Britain gives aid to India despite New Delhi having its own space programme.
Flooding and landslips have completely cut off rail routes to large parts of England's south west as storms continue to batter southern Britain.
"It seems to me that the aid budget is about us giving charity overseas. When you've got an emergency in this country, it's time to say that charity begins at home," he said. "The international aid budget is £11 billion [HK$140 billion] a year. All the government have offered so far is less than 1 per cent of that in the form of £100 million.
"If, suddenly, that was 5 per cent or 6 per cent, you'd be talking real money."

Of course there's the usual lunacy from some who believe spending UK cash abroad to reduce 'climate change' will be the best way to rip us off
Telegraph.

Britain’s international aid budget will help reduce flooding in the UK by addressing the causes of climate change abroad, Eric Pickles has said.

Yes that is the enviroloon line that our money spent abroad might have prevented the flooding. The sort of lunacy that prevented dredging to siphon off the excess water quickly and wouldn't allow the silt to be used to raise land (That's the EU for you putting wildlife above people)
It's now reached the stage where £11 billion is being handed out to kleptocracies and countries who don't need it. This cash would be better spent on us and used as the occasional bribe to sell hardware abroad not handed out to warlords and corrupt politicians.
Foreign aid is a luxury we can no longer afford along with muslim extremism and the EU which are the most pressing problems facing this nation other than the growth of the public sector and fake charities.
It's time to take a chainsaw to state spending and remove billions from the tax cache to be spent on things we simply don't need.
Somewhere along the line the political class hijacked the budgets to spend on pet projects, they need to be reined in and if necessary punitively fined to claim back the waste they've lavished upon themselves.
The boy Clegg is going on about a mansion tax (again) he'd be better off destroying the states largesse on organisations like quango's and the environment agency.
Except he won't, he has a finger in that pie via the EU as well.

Charity? More like pickpocketing!

Charity is supposed to be voluntary giving, where you choose a cause and give some of your cash towards it. At least that used to be the definition of charity in the old days before the government decided which causes your cash was going towards...
Telegraph.

A mandatory “charity” plastic bag charge which comes into force next year will rake in millions of pounds in tax for the Treasury, Telegraph discloses
Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, unveiled Government plans to charge 5p for plastic bags from October 2015 at September’s party conference.
He justified the new plastic bag charge next year by saying it will raise money for charity and stop damage to the environment.
However ministers have now admitted that the charge will raise millions of pounds a year in VAT for the Treasury.
Dan Rogerson, the environment minister, told MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee that he expected the charge to raise £95million a year, only £70million of which will go to “charitable causes”.

Now I suspect that many people might just start taking their own bags to supermarkets, although there will be times when it isn't possible. That said giving the government £25 million in VAT because the boy Clegg wants to be a poster boy for the environment strikes me as a step too far in the usual ill thought out government scheme. Nor do I like the idea that the government deciding where the rest is to go on 'charitable' causes, mostly because their idea of a charitable cause isn't mine. They are quite likely to spunk it away to enviroloon causes and global warming prevention rather than somewhere where it might actually do some good.
Essentially we are in the realms of fake charities here where groups suckle at the governments teats for funding, some of it to do with lobbying the government to do what the government wants to do anyway, but making it appear like its a popular decision by 'the people.' You can normally spot them by the name, although some long established so called charities have gone down this route too where they are doing very well (paid directorships etc) from supposedly doing good, although a quick check of the accounts will tell you the majority of the funding goes on wages and lobbying, rather than charitable works.
This in essence is why charitable giving by many members of the public is tailing off simply because the bloody government is giving away our taxes direct from out pockets and deciding who gets our cash, rather than us deciding who if what gets it.
Unfortunately whilst we have morons like our current crop of politicians who believe they know best who should get their ill gotten gains, this will continue... at least until we hang them all.

Other peoples money

Why is it that the government (in the shape of Nick 'the boy' Clegg) always look to the financial option in the form of a punitive tax when it comes to solving a problem?
Bit of a rhetorical question I know, it is the first option of any government to dip its hands into peoples pockets.
Mail.

Shoppers are to be charged 5p for plastic bags in supermarkets and other large stores.
The move by ministers is a victory for the Daily Mail’s Banish the Bags campaign which has highlighted the menace of carrier bags.
The Government gave the stores an ultimatum that if they couldn’t curb the use of bags by voluntary efforts, they would be forced to act.
But after a brief reduction, the past two years have seen a sharp rise in the use of throwaway bags – to a shocking seven billion a year.

A far more simple solution would have been to insist that supermarkets used biodegradable bags, but no, Cleggy boy thinks the 5p should be given to enviroloony charities to clear up the mess, rather than actually deal with the cause. Oh it might reduce the use of such bags, it has in Wales and Northern Ireland, but if usage does come down, it doesn't eliminate the problem, merely stuffs the buyer with an additional cost on top of their shopping.
Whilst I'm all for cleaning up the environment, this won't do it, it might slow it down, but it's putting other peoples money into the hands of unaccountable charities to promote their own agendas which in the past haven't exactly been taxpayer friendly. Plus if I want to donate to charity, that ought to be my choice, not the governments which is why the so called fake charity money flow from the taxpayer by the government needs to be stopped as well. If it's a worthy cause, people will pay, the RNLI manage quite well without government support, the various environmental and health charities sucking at the taxpayers teat should either sink or swim by the same rules as the RNLI.
But no, Cleggy boy wants to promote his image by dipping once again into our pockets and give peoples money to charities they may not wish to support...

This is why we should not be giving foreign aid

It should not be up to the taxpayer to support humanitarian aid abroad unless they choose to give personally. Most of the aid goes where it shouldn't and either lines the pockets of kleptocracies or is seized by militants to keep wars going for far longer than they need to. There is strong evidence that the 'Live Aid' cash and supplies did exactly that in Ethiopia and led to dependency on foreign aid rather than looking out for themselves as the Ethiopian army and the rebels both seized supplies and kept the 'poor' starving and requesting aid.
BBC.

Humanitarian aid supplies worth £480,000 - funded by UK taxpayers - were seized by al-Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia, it has emerged.
Supplies were in warehouses captured in a raid by al-Shabab in November 2011, the Department for International Development's (DfID) accounts reveal.
DfID would not specify what those supplies included. It said all material was destroyed in the raid or later.
A DfID spokesman said working in "fragile states carries inherent risk".
The department's annual accounts said the £480,000 was written off "following the theft between November 2011 and February 2012, by al-Shabab in southern Somalia, of DfID-funded humanitarian materials and supplies from the offices and warehouses of partner organisations, to which DfID had provided funding to deliver projects and programmes".
The accounts said DfID's partners had "no prior warning of the confiscations being carried out and therefore had no time to prevent the loss by relocating goods".

Completely missing the point that had we not sent aid, the islamics wouldn't have been able to seize the aid.
It's not just the UK taxpayer of course, it's pretty much any charity which involves itself abroad where much of what is given is wasted, stolen, misused or just the wrong stuff. A lot of charities have done well for themselves by doing good, nice plush offices in London and well heeled officials drawing their wages from the generosity of others. That's not to say I don't admire those at the sharp end, though as those two young ladies attacked by islamobarbarians in Zanzibar found out, volunteering has its own attendant risks too.
I'm sick and tired of the government taking our cash to give to those abroad, charity begins at home and we have enough problems here. If it's a bribe to get foreign governments to buy our stuff, then fine, say so and let's be done with it. But stop the aid, it's not getting in anything like the quantities needed to those in real need, if anything its only prolonging their agony by feeding or funding their oppressors.

Paying someone to tell you what to do...

There are fake charities who suckle from the taxpayer teat, they do some good work (in theory) but mostly appear to be sinecures for government supporters to lobby the government to do what the government is going to do, just to give it a semi sheen of 'popular support.'
However it's getting more and more difficult these days to justify supporting some government spending by giving it a charity endorsement. A lot of people look very closely now at the who, what and why's of the matter and claiming that you are independent of the government is no shield, not any more.
Telegraph.

A supposedly independent charity campaign to pressure the Government into spending more on foreign aid was secretly orchestrated by David Cameron, his ministers and aid organisations funded by the taxpayer, it has been alleged.
The IF campaign’s target was to force the Government to stick to its pledge of ring fencing overseas aid with a huge rally in Hyde Park and appeals from a host of celebrities including David Beckham and Mo Farah. But The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that the project was hatched at meetings in Whitehall and at the Conservative Party conference. Mr Cameron’s controversial policy, which commits the UK to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on foreign aid despite swingeing cuts in other departments, has run into strong opposition from backbench Tory MPs and activists. They complain that the target is arbitrary and that aid money is susceptible to squandering by foreign governments. Plans for the IF campaign were first laid almost two years before its official launch, during a meeting in 2011 between the Prime Minister’s aide and five charities which between them receive more than £60million a year from the Department for International development (DfID).

As far as I'm concerned the government should not be using taxpayers money to fund any charity, that's up to individual donators as we should be the ones to decide what's a good cause or not. Nor does the government (and indeed some charities) have a good track record on doling out the money successfully to those who really need it. It mostly goes to corrupt officials in third world kleptocracies. Some of the money also goes to keeping the charity runners in the manner to which they have become accustomed. You'll see the pictures of the aid workers, you won't see pictures of the bosses eating a paid for by you lunch with other ne'er do well's.
Cameron wanted the 'aid budget' to be ring fenced because it was an attempt to show that the Tories are a caring party, another reason was to make him look good on the world stage. He succeeded with neither, which is consistent with his track record so far.
The aid budget is fast becoming a millstone around the governments neck with it's own members. Stunts like lobbying yourself to do what you want are not going to help here, at all.

Other peoples stuff

Once again our 'beloved' Coagulation are insisting that people who own something and charge for its use should give it up to those who don't pay for it. After all, what else can you think of this little scam...
Mail.

Private schools should not be expected to open up their facilities to pupils from local state schools, a leading headmistress said yesterday.
Louise Robinson, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, said it was ‘beyond the pale’ for the Government to insist that private schools share their ‘unique selling points’, such as facilities and resources, with the ‘competition’.
She said that middle class parents who manage to find the money for private school fees should not be expected to bankroll state pupils who want to use the same resources.
Her comments are likely to spark fierce debate among private school heads, many of whom justify their schools’ ‘charitable’ status by stressing the ways in which they share facilities with local state schools and the community.

Shared facilities is fine, these are already agreed between the private and public sector, however to insist that something which is not part of the deal becomes part of it well that sounds like the government at work. The unique selling points however are not the bits which the private schools share, otherwise they wouldn't be unique now would they? Nor under any stretch of the imagination (save perhaps to a socialist) would a public school be regarded as a charity in order to reap the benefit from those who are paying out for unique selling points.
Perhaps the government ought to be looking at ways to actually improve the public schools rather than leech off the private sector?

Only half?

They don't get it, they really just don't get it...
Mail.

The International Development Secretary will this week unveil plans to slash Britain’s controversial £280 million-a-year aid budget to India.
Justine Greening will outline how the payments could be reduced amid claims the country is too rich to need handouts.
Sources suggest that Miss Greening may cut the subsidies by up to half.
The move comes amid mounting criticism that Britain’s overseas aid programme – which is set to reach more than £12 billion by 2014 – cannot be justified at a time of spending cuts back home.
However, The Mail on Sunday understands that Ms Greening will merely divert money sent to India to poorer countries – not cut the overall aid budget.

In a time of economic crisis, in times when cuts are being made at home, the first thing to go should be foreign aid. If indeed the government should actually be giving our money without our permission to foreigners anyway. I've always maintained that charity should begin at home and that governments should not under any circumstances be giving taxpayers cash to any charities at home or abroad. Yes that definitely includes the fake charities suckling at the taxpayer teat in order to tell the government what it wants to hear, rather than what the public want.
Given my way I'd scrap the Dept for International Development, I'd stop any payments to fake charities or indeed any charity directly from the government, if they want my money, they can bloody well ask me directly. I'd take a chain saw to the likes of any government funded bodies that do not serve a useful purpose (looking at you Quango's) and remove the green tariff on energy bills.
Any spare cash left could either go to reduce taxes, or remove as much of the fuel duty as I could in order to really kick start the economy by giving people more money to spend at home.
I know it's human nature to want to help those less fortunate than ourselves, but frankly we have enough of those at home. Government ought to realise this as much as the taxpayers do...

Charity begins at home!

What is it with governments of both Labour and Tory hue that believe that our money (yes, its ours, never theirs) is much better spent abroad than looking after the people in this country that most desperately need it (the elderly and sick)
Mail.

UN-backed Millennium Village project — to which Britain is now contributing millions of pounds for the first time — began in 2004 and encompasses half a million Africans.
It is designed to prove that targeted aid can lift such places out of poverty in just five years. But the scheme is facing mounting accusations that it is a waste of money, and is doing less to help rural Africans than it claims.
According to the project’s documents, the business plan reveals ‘total direct costs’ are expected to be £17.2 million and that the goal is ‘substantial poverty reduction’ for up to 2,250 households.
This means spending more than an astonishing £7,500 per household. To put this in perspective, this is 34 times the average annual income of households in the region.
The British Government — desperate to find ways to spend its soaring aid budgets — is handing over £11.5 million to this vainglorious venture.
Despite the austerity weighing on British families at home, spending on foreign aid — currently £8.8 billion a year — is rising by more than one-third under the Coalition.
Indeed, last Sunday International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell insisted they will enshrine in law the target of giving 0.7 per cent of our national income to global aid.

Now if I want to help starving Africans, that should be my choice to hand over my money, not the governments choice, not the politicians choice, not now, not ever! As one of the villagers says...

'Even if the money does flow from your country, it will end up in the pockets of corrupt people and politicians. We will not see any spent on our infrastructure or in our pockets.’

The government is throwing away our cash to kleptocracies and corrupt officials, it knows it is and we know they are, yet they continue to fund the totally unnecessary Department for International Development. Yet in our country we suffer huge heating bills, a badly mismanaged health system, atrocious education standards, cuts to our armed forces, fake charities funded by the government to tell ministers what they want to hear and ruinous green taxation to fund these ridiculous schemes.
Charity begins at home, if the people of this country want to fund projects abroad then it should be our choice, not the governments and it should be voluntary. The life of on pensioner dying of the cold in our land is not worth any (supposed) benefit given in cash abroad, not now, not ever. It's time we said you're on your own.

Surprise, surprise

We've known for a while about fake charities, various blogs and groups have highlighted their activities over the years there's even a fakecharity site, which appears no longer to be regularly updated, but the information it contains is still valid.
Still, the numbers shown there only appear to be the tip of the iceberg as a report shows...
Mail.

Thousands of charities are barely disguised fronts for state-backed campaigns, a report warned yesterday.
It said 27,000 groups rely on the taxpayer for more than 75 per cent of their income – with individual donors providing less than half the funding for the entire voluntary sector.
Many of the charities lobby for the pet causes of politicians, according to the Institute of Economic Affairs. The environment, public health, foreign aid, inequality and women’s rights are areas that have been ‘particularly blessed’.
Christopher Snowdon, the report’s author, said government departments should be banned from using public money for advertising campaigns and called for the abolition of unrestricted grants to charities. ‘Government funding of politically active charities, non-governmental organisations and pressure groups is objectionable,’ his study said.
‘Firstly, it subverts democracy and debases the concept of charity. Secondly, it is an unnecessary and wasteful use of taxpayers’ money.
‘Thirdly, by funding like-minded organisations and ignoring others, genuine civil society is cold-shouldered in the political process.’
The IEA said that charities such as the School Food Trust – created by the Department of Education following Jamie Oliver’s school dinners campaign – act as ‘special advisers to the Government and are essentially part of the bureaucracy’.

Dear Lord, 27,000? I knew it was bad, but I would never have guessed that it was quite so many suckling at the taxpayer teat. To my mind, it's not the job of the government to be giving my money away to any special interest group, if I want to donate to them I will and the vast majority of the groups represented quite frankly deserve to go to the wall. You have Alcohol Concern, ASH, Smokefree NorthWest, Smokefree North East, D-Myst, etc. ASH is one of the most powerful fake 'charities' in the land and directly dictates Government policy yet only raises £11,000 in direct donations. Yet, genuine charities like the RNLI get nothing (nor I suspect do they want government support)

The real reason though is that politicians have slipped so far down in the trust league that any initiatives they start are now held in extreme suspicion, so they opted for 'trusted' charities to try and tell us what to do. Judging by some of the causes supported, it's fairly obvious that the political classes still haven't a clue about what people want, which is mostly less of the political classes telling us what to do. Nor do they see anything wrong with throwing our cash at a 'good' cause. 'Good' causes being anything that fits their ideas on what we should be made to do, without actually being any proof of doing good at all, merely hectoring us to change our ways.
There are some who believe that any 'charity' that receives government funding should lose its charitable status and a little health warning tagged onto their name when they make a pronouncement, something like "Paid by the UK government to tell you what to do."
The best idea though is to simply give them nothing at all, let them stand on their own feet by public subscription/donation. I rather think most will go under.

Giving money to those who hate us

The foreign aid budget never ceases to cause my blood pressure to rise when I hear about the ridiculous lengths politicians and their ilk will go too to give away my cash. I despair when it's given to countries that either don't want it, when it lines kleptocrats pockets and espescially to countries that hate us/everyone and consider those that give them cash with contempt as it confirms in their eyes that we are weak and fear them.
Such a country being Somalia an Islamic hellhole, ruled by kleptocratic warlords and who exports violence and piracy as their main forms of income/hobby.
Express.

DAVID Cameron is set to ignite fresh anger at Britain’s soaring overseas handouts bill today by pledging millions of pounds to war-torn Somalia.
He will unveil an extra £33million in aid to the country, infamous as a breeding ground for terrorism. The gift means that UK payouts to Somalia will rise to nearly £220million in the next three years.
The Prime Minister insisted yesterday that Somalia should get a “second chance” to rebuild itself after two decades of famine and civil war. But critics warned against throwing yet more taxpayers’ cash into a country described by Foreign Secretary William Hague earlier this month as “the world’s most failed state”. Tory MP Philip Davies said: “Pouring ever larger amounts of our money is never going to solve this country’s problems.” Emma Boon of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “It is crucial that taxpayers’ money isn’t lost to corruption in this highly volatile area.”

Somalia is a failed state, there isn't a government as such and about a third of the country is under the control of a group called al-Shabab, which is linked to Al Qaeda, which as they are Islamic fundamentalists without the oil revenue is why it's a failed state. As opposed to Saudi Arabia which also would be a failed state if it could not bribe its populace and use the spare cash to fund international wahhabism aka jihad.
The people who (sort of) run Somalia only recognise strength, it's part of the mind set of the area, it's why the Palestinians wont wont opt for a peace deal with Israel because the rest of the idiot west keeps telling Israel to give up more concessions whilst the Palestinians and their type never do because only the weak give things away. It's the same with Somalia and Somalians, there's a cultural mindset that equates strength with violence rather than restraint, not all of course, but enough of a majority to be a problem in and around Somalia and any place where Somalians move to live, the attackers of rhea Page were of Somalian descent, as was Said Adam a Somali man who dragged a 23-year-old woman into an alleyway and scarred her for life during a terrifying sexual attack. Their gangs are behind a lot of violence in parts of the UK as this article points out.
Once again we have the UK government giving away our cash where it will be wasted and often enough used to buy weapons for Islamic fanatics or those fighting them, either way it will be used to fuel the violence in that part of the world.
When will they learn? Charity begins (and ends) at home for the UK government, if the people of the UK want to give generously abroad, that's up to us, but the cash we give the government should stay here!

Corruption

I've often suspected that corruption, both moral and venal is a part of the race industry and those who work within it, to be sure the intentions when they were set up were (probably) good, but these days it's an industry of itself and pretty much a closed shop to the mainstream indigenous community unless of course they run foul of it. Unfortunately it's not nice in this case to have your suspicions confirmed.
Wales Online.

A publicly-funded charity whose chief executive has admitted using its funds to pay off a £9,000 personal credit card debt is facing an Employment Tribunal claim from the ex-employee who told trustees about the irregularity.
Awema (the All Wales Ethnic Minority Association) is in turmoil following our revelation earlier this month that chief executive Naz Malik had been given a written warning after using a cheque pre-signed by the charity’s treasurer to pay off his credit card bill of £9.340.36. Mr Malik said he considered the money as advance expenses.
The Welsh Government has launched an inquiry into this and other alleged irregularities at Awema, which has received £8.4m in European aid to run projects aimed at increasing the employment chances of people from ethnic minority communities.
Mr Malik was also given an oral warning after failing to make declarations of interest “on all relevant occasions where he, or members of his family stand to benefit from trustee and board decision making”.
The chief executive’s daughter and daughter-in-law are both employed in senior roles by Awema, while his wife and son have acted as volunteers at the charity.
We have now confirmed that Sylwia Bobrowska, a former finance officer with Awema, has lodged an Employment Tribunal claim against the organisation. Her case, due to be heard in April, is being pursued on four grounds – unfair dismissal, breach of contract, discrimination and a breach of her rights under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.
It is known there were serious causes for concern about the way Awema was run, that an intimidating atmosphere had been created at Awema by the chief executive, that a number of staff had been dismissed in contravention of Awema’s disciplinary procedure, and that there was evidence that Mr Malik was guilty of bullying and harassment. He recommended that Mr Malik should be suspended pending a disciplinary hearing.
In fact a disciplinary hearing was held swiftly at which it was decided that although he was guilty of gross misconduct, Mr Malik could keep his job.
Awema’s finance director Saquib Zia is currently suspended on full pay pending a disciplinary hearing into unspecified acts of alleged misconduct. Mr Zia gave evidence to Dr Dunn’s inquiry about the £9,340.36 payment made to clear Mr Malik’s credit card debt.
Seven of Awema’s trustees have resigned because of the decision to keep Mr Malik in his post.

How many of us if found guilty of gross misconduct could expect to keep our jobs? How many of us if in charge of some department would try to get family members onto the staff? Only in the public services would you expect to find this sort of thing going on and only there in the multicultural race industry where jobs for the "minorities" seem to have a gold plated untouchable get out of jail free card to play with every accusation of misconduct aka the point and scream racist approach.Already started of course and the line being promoted by the BBC (who else)
Anywhere else, the miscreant would be suspended pending a proper enquiry, anywhere else anyone using the companies expenses to pay off a personal debt would be sacked so quickly there would be scorch marks from their swift passage out of the door.
You'll also note that it is a publicly funded charity too getting £8.4 million off the EU and known to have receives £3 million off the Welsh government plus other funding from the lottery, in other words it's a fake charity.
Once again members of the ethnic minorities are abusing public funding from taxpayers, being defended for doing so by use of the "race" card and would appear to be safe in their jobs because of this.

We already give too much.

I am sick and tired of politicians of all parties deciding that they can just dip into taxpayers pockets and taxpayers goodwill to help fund problems abroad that likely don't concern us or can be resolved by other means.
Sky.

Rich countries are failing to contribute to an international emergency fund leaving the world "dangerously unprepared" for future disasters, the International Development Secretary has warned.
Andrew Mitchell said the United Nations' disaster response funding system is expected to be left severely underfunded.
Mr Mitchell's warning comes after a wave of large-scale disasters over the last year, including famine in the Horn of Africa, the Japan tsunami, the New Zealand earthquake and floods in Pakistan and the Philippines.
Growing numbers of people living in vulnerable areas means the number of those affected by major tragedies is expected to increase in future, he added.
The Government is giving £20m to the Central Emergency Response Fund (Cerf) next year, in addition to £40m already pledged, and has called on the international community to "wake up" to the challenge ahead.
It said many rich countries wait until a disaster strikes before responding, which means critical emergency first response work could be put at risk.
The fund - set up following the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami to provide a coordinated international response - is expected to have a shortfall of £45m next year.

It rather looks like the main contributor at the moment is the UK government with £20 million this year on top of £40 million already pledged, yet there is a £45 million shortfall. Which rather suggests someone (that being the UK taxpayer) are being taken for mugs again by a government determined to keep spending our income on something that could easily be covered by charitable giving at home and not involuntarily filched from our pockets by politicians who clearly don't have a clue as to how the money might be spent by the bureaucrats running it. No I don't accept the premise that somehow or other a co-ordinated response will be better than a patchquilt response either, I've seen far too many cases of government aid going to the wrong areas, terrorist groups and various other ne'er-do-wells to trust a co-ordinated response group who are far too likely to be doing far too well for themselves at doing well.
Charity begins at home when it comes to government spending (or it should) any spending on international aid should be done by direct appeal to the public and we'll see just which causes actually appeal, if any.

This is a bad thing?

The dead tree Times had a headline today on a clampdown on lobbyists might hit trade unions and charities, so being a nosey bugger and whilst my good lady was paying our tax on the stupid (lottery ticket) I had a read in Morrison's news section. It's covered now by the Times paywall, but I found a picture of it.

Not that I suspect you'd think I was lying, but simply for the record.
Now I suspect most of the people reading this will be fairly pleased if Trade Unions and (fake) charities are somehow prevented from lobbying politicians directly as from past experience, most do not have our interests at heart. The (fake) charities in particular seem to be paid for out of government funds to tell the government what they want to hear. With the Unions though, it's because they own the Labour Party and want access to Westminster to tell their pets what to do. What the headline sort of hides though is that it's calling for a compulsory register of lobbyists, which an only work if it includes all those that lobby government: commercial lobbyists, companies, charities, unions, law firms, management consultants, trade bodies, think tanks. Basically the whole of the public affairs industry. It will let those who are interested know just who (and how much) lobbying is done by certain "special interest" groups of our MP's and provided there is a sensible minimum financial threshold, below which charities or for that matter small businesses, would not have to sign up I can't see a problem with it. The likes though of big business, Trade Unions, Layers (the Law industry) Big (fake) charities and government/privately sponsored think tanks need to have the rock lifted on their activities and have it exposed to the light of public scrutiny.
The Times is scaremongering, a sensible register of lobbyist will hurt no-one save those who are spending large enough bribes to influence our politicians.
It's all now down to our greedy MP's at to whether it goes through.

A cause worth supporting

I'm an English Nationalist of the civic kind not the ethnic kind in that I don't believe you have to be of Anglo-Saxon stock and trace your ancestry back for God knows how many generations to be accepted by various ethno-Nationalist groups. My thinking runs along the lines of Anglo ergo sum, if you think you're English and live here and obey the laws of the land (with the casual disdain for jobsworths the English have) then you're English, your skin colour, religion blood type, don't matter, it's how you feel. If however you tag "Brit" onto the end of a racial description such as a Pakistani Brit or other adaptations then you aren't English because you don't think of yourself as English, same with those who describe themselves only as Muslims. Norman Tebbit approached it via the cricket test and it's a reasonably valid point but only if applied to an anyone but England attitude, I quite expect if I lived abroad I'd support England if they played my adopted country, but only when they played England otherwise I'd support my new country. So while in essence I'm all for people adopting and fitting in with their new countries, in England there has been a distinct lack of support for those of us who were born here and consider ourselves English rather than as the government does British.
Anyway, for those of us who are English and wish to support England, I'd like to introduce you to The Steadfast Trust charity for the ethnic English community. 

The Steadfast Trust is the first and only registered charity which undertakes work specifically for the ethnic English community. It exists to promote the education, legal rights, welfare, and overall interests of the community within England. Our work is driven by the belief that the English, and in particular the young, would gain greater self-respect and self-confidence if they had a better appreciation and understanding of their unique culture and heritage.

There is growing evidence from various reports (view reports) that many English school children are falling behind those from other ethnic groups. They are also increasingly engaging in anti-social behaviour and leading increasingly unruly and destructive lives.  Bold action is needed to tackle these problems.

We believe that the English are a community like any other and that our Englishness should be promoted as something that is positive in our lives and the lives of our children. A strong sense of communal identity helps develop a strong sense of communal responsibility; it helps bring people together and counter the alienation from society that many feel. The young people of all ethnic groups should feel confident in who they are and should be inspired by their own cultural background to reach their full potential in society. We aim to promote practical schemes that will help bring this about for the English.
It is of the utmost importance that our charity grows and prospers. Unlike the charities and communal organizations which pursue the interests of other ethnic groups, it is unlikely that we will receive any public money.  We will have to find the necessary resources from within our own community. We are confident that the English can show the same ambition and enterprise that has enabled other communities to build cultural institutions that further their interests and address their needs. There is much to do but we at the Steadfast Trust are eager to get on with the task that faces us.

 So not a fake charity and unlikely to get any government money, which in my eyes as an Englishman makes it a cause worth supporting. I know many of you out there like to give only to causes that have no political agenda or are not funded by the government and this is one, like the RNLI in which your money will go to help those who should be brought up to be proud of their country yet have been abandoned by successive governments and the political establishment to see the English as something we are not. No other nation in the UK has had the vilification that the English have had to put up with, where our flag is described in the media as that of hooligans where politicians have apologised for our history and tried to pretend that somehow British = English, but only to the English, never to any other national group.
The fightback began after devolution, the English are slowly awakening to see what has been done against them, this charity is a start, I hope you will give it moral support if you cannot give it financial support.

Despicable

Most crimes are despicable, though some crimes seemingly go beyond that into the truly despicable, particularly those which involve robbing or using violence upon the disabled, elderly, very young or in the case here, robbing a charity.

BBC.

The Midlands Air Ambulance's headquarters have been raided by three masked men armed with a Taser.

Police said the men burst into the charity's office on the Enterprise Trading Estate, off Pedmore Road, in Brierley Hill at around 0845 BST.
An ambulance spokesman said they held 20 members of staff hostage with the Taser although it was not used on them.
No-one was injured, and the men escaped in a member of staff's car having stolen bags of money.
Midlands Air Ambulance charity director Hanna Sebright said: "I find it hard to comprehend that people would commit such a violent crime and steal money from a life-saving charity.
"Dedicated people have gone to great lengths to raise money for the charity, and it is appalling that it will be unable to be used for the purpose of keeping the air ambulances in the air.
"This despicable act could actually cost people's lives."
Police said the men are all described as black, in their 20s and wearing scarves across their faces.

 It's akin I suppose to robbing from the poor box of a church, when churches of course had a poor box. That money was raised to help an air ambulance service run so it could save lives by getting the injured to a hospital safely and a lot quicker than by road. Instead the costs of running the service will have to be raised again by the generosity of the public assuming they can, these are hard times after all and if they can't perhaps lives will be lost as these things cost for fuel and maintenance along with wages for the staff.
I know under the law all crimes are supposedly equal, that robbery is robbery and it's only the degree that is taken into account use of violence etc. But frankly these guys if caught should be looking at spending the rest of their lives chopping down trees in hard labour somewhere cold and unfriendly.
But they won't, you and I know they wont, because there is no such thing as real justice anymore, just degrees of law without any real deterrent to breaking the law.
Personally I think we should just be allowed to lynch them, but that's just my anger and vitriol at a system that fails us time and time again coming out.